Peace and Justice Post

by Badri Raina

For decades your endless waters

flowed quiescent,

all your fertile powers spent,

vassal to far-off matters,

as a despot had you in thrall.

How you have now turned

from  slumber, O Nile,

and already spurned

with the memory of ancient might

a regime of cruel guile.

Your children of all ages, both sexes,

and all religions

fill Egypt shoulder to shoulder

and end to end—

their vision not of violence

but something far bolder:

as their conglomerate voice waxes,

they are determined

that in the Egypt to come

not just some, but all

shall feast of peace, prosperity

and democracy.

Children of true Islam,

the revolution you make

bids fair to shame

a world of perfidy that has given

to the faith such a bad name.

Your chant of human liberation

already rings in nation after nation.

Never will either the Arab world

or the rest of us be quite the same.

O Nile, your waters pour a needed balm

on a desecrated world;

do receive our salaam.

By Richard Smallteacher, Wikileaks staff, Counter Currents,

Feb 1, 2011

WikiLeaks

New cables released by Wikileaks reveal that the U.S. government has been quietly anticipating as well as cultivating Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian spy chief, as the top candidate to take over the country should anything happen to President Hosni Mubarak. On Saturday, this expectation was proved correct when Mubarak named Suleiman to the post of vice-president making him the first in line to assume power.

An intelligence official who trained at the U.S. Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, Suleiman became head of the spy agency in 1993 which brought him into close contact with the Central Intelligence Agency. Recently he took up a more public role as chief Egyptian interlocuter with Israel to discuss the peace process with Hamas and Fatah, the rival Palestinian factions.

In recent years most political analysts have assumed that the heir apparent was Gamal Mubarak, the president’s younger son, but the U.S. embassy in Cairo came to a different conclusion more than five years ago. On 15 June 2005, a memo (05CAIRO4534) written for Timothy Pounds, the director for Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and North Africa at U.S. National Security Council, noted: “(A)ll agreed that the most likely candidate to be appointed to the post (of vice-president) was General Omar Soliman, Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service (EGIS).” (State department officials use a different spelling of Suleiman’s name)

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Dissidents demanding the end of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime had better hope they don’t end up under arrest. The first members of Mubarak’s new cabinet — a face-lift so he can stay in power — are heavily involved in the apparatus of state repression, including a spymaster who worked with the U.S. to torture terrorist suspects.

New prime minister Ahmed Shafik is a long-time deputy of Mubarak with a reputation for toughness. (Title of a 2005 profile: “With an Iron Fist.”) The new interior minister was the top jailer. And the new vice president is the Middle East’s most powerful intelligence chief. That looks less like the kind of government demanded by the protesters and more like a government designed to crack down on them.

Let’s start with the new internal-security chief, Gen. Mahmoud Wagdy, the former head of prisons. What happens in an Egyptian prison? The U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report explains: “[P]rison cells were overcrowded, with a lack of medical care, proper hygiene, food, clean water and proper ventilation. Tuberculosis was widespread; abuse was common, especially of juveniles in adult facilities; and guards brutalized prisoners.”

As interior minister, Wagdy will run the police forces responsible for keeping the regime in power. After a brief disappearance over the weekend, when several cities saw riots break out amidst the protests, the police returned to the streets Sunday. That prompted many Egyptians to wonder if Mubarak pulled the police back to tell the country that the alternative to his regime is chaos. Wegdy’s ascension would place someone familiar with crackdowns at the helm of those forces.

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by Jeremy Scahill, The Nation, Feb 1, 2011

If it weren’t for Al Jazeera, much of the unfolding Egyptian revolution would never have been televised. Its Arabic and English language channels have provided the most comprehensive coverage of any network in any language hands-down. Despite the Mubarak regime’s attempts to shut it down, Al Jazeera’s brave reporters and camera crews have persevered. Six Al Jazeera journalists were detained briefly on Monday, their equipment seized. The US responded swiftly to their detention with the State Department calling for their release. “We are concerned by the shutdown of Al Jazeera in Egypt and arrest of its correspondents,” State Department spokesperson PJ Crowley tweeted. “Egypt must be open and the reporters released.”

The Obama White House has been intently monitoring al Jazeera’s coverage of the Egyptian revolt. The network, already famous worldwide, is now a household name in the US. Thousands of Americans—many of whom likely had never watched the network before—are livestreaming Al Jazeera on the internet and over their phones. With a handful of exceptions, most US cities and states have no channel that broadcasts Al Jazeera. That’s because cowardly US cable providers refuse to grant the channel a distribution platform, largely for fear of being perceived as supporting or enabling a network that for years has been portrayed negatively by US officials.

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Stuart Littlewood, urknet.info, Jan 29, 2011

Mention Richard Falk and you think of an honourable man who cares deeply about injustice, particularly the trampled rights of Palestinians under the evil jackboot.  Mention Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations, and what comes to mind? The BBC reported in December 2008: “During her stint in the Clinton White House, she was described as ‘brilliant’ but also ‘authoritarian’ and ‘brash’. According to the New York Times, she acknowledges ‘a certain impatience at times’.” She is also said to be “unwilling to consider opinions that differ from her own”. Ambassador Rice has just demanded that Falk, the UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur in the Palestinian territories, step down from his UN position. “In my view, Mr. Falk’s latest commentary [an entry in his blog about the media and 9/11] is so noxious that it should finally be plain to all that he should no longer continue in his position on behalf of the UN.” Falk’s crime was saying that the US administration’s reluctance to address the awkward gaps and contradictions identified by several scholars in the official explanations of 9/11, only fuels suspicions of a conspiracy. And he suggested that “what may be more distressing than the apparent cover up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials”. Continues >>

At Least 150 Dead in Egypt as US Plans Evacuations

Mass censorship, mass arrests, over 150 people dead and several thousand wounded. Egypt is in full-on revolt right now, and tens of thousands of protesters continue to insist on the ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarak.

The Obama Administration, which is still holding on to hopes that Mubarak can crush the protests and retain power, is now starting to come to grips with the reality that it might not happen, and preparing the mass evacuation of US citizens from the nation in chartered planes. Officials say it will likely take several days to do so.

Meanwhile Mubarak is clinging to power, however tenuously, and the military’s simultaneous reluctance to come out completely against him or turn their guns on the protesters the way the police were continues to leave considerable doubt where the situation is going to end.

The Egyptian government’s previous decision to shrug off the protests, however, and to insist that Egypt is “not Tunisia” does not seem to have paid off for them, and now other dictators across the region are insisting that they are “not Tunisia or Egypt.” And that may be the real question here – how many of these nations will also find out that they are wrong, and that wherever they are situated, nations with crumbling economies and little personal freedom can’t count on their public remaining silent forever.

Chris Marsden, wsws.org, Jan 31, 2011

Protests involving hundreds and thousands continued in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Suez and other cities throughout Egypt on Sunday.

Workers and young people defied the curfew imposed by the military and rejected with contempt Hosni Mubarak’s efforts to portray a new cabinet as a step towards greater democracy. Saturday’s appointment of Omar Suleiman, the director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (EGID), as vice president was seen as particularly provocative.

“Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, both of you are agents of the Americans,” protesters chanted. “Mubarak, Mubarak, the plane awaits!”

Several prisons across the country have been attacked. Thousands of prisoners reportedly escaped from four jails. They included 34 leaders from the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, freed from the Wadi Natroun jail.

Tens of thousands flocked to the Tahrir Square. Clashes between demonstrators and police have left at least 150 people dead and thousands more wounded. The death toll is likely far higher—given the paucity of reporting from smaller towns and cities.

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By Stephen Soldz, OpEdNews.com, Jan 29, 2011

In response to the mass protests of recent days, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has appointed his first Vice President in his over 30 years rule, intelligence chief Omar Suleiman.

Image from Wikipedia

When Suleiman was first announced, Aljazeera commentators were describing him as a “distinguished” and “respected ” man. It turns out, however, that he is distinguished for, among other things, his central role in Egyptian torture and in the US rendition to torture program. Further, he is “respected” by US officials for his cooperation with their torture plans, among other initiatives.

Katherine Hawkins, an expert on the US’s rendition to torture program, in an email, has sent some critical texts where Suleiman pops up. Thus, Jane Mayer, in The Dark Side, pointed to Suleiman’s role in the rendition program:

Each rendition was authorized at the very top levels of both governments….The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman,     negotiated directly with top Agency officials.  [Former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as “very bright, very realistic,” adding that he was cognizant that there was a downside to “some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way” (pp. 113).

Stephen Grey, in Ghost Plane, his investigative work on the rendition program also points to Suleiman as central in the rendition program:

To negotiate these assurances [that the Egyptians wouldn’t “torture” the prisoner delivered for torture] the CIA dealt principally in Egypt through Omar Suleiman, the chief of the Egyptian general intelligence service (EGIS) since 1993. It was he who arranged the meetings with the Egyptian interior ministry…. Suleiman, who understood English well, was an urbane and sophisticated man. Others told me that for years Suleiman was America’s chief interlocutor with the Egyptian regime — the main channel to President Hosni Mubarak himself, even on matters far removed from intelligence and security.

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by John Dear, CommonDreams.org, Jan 31, 2011

On Thursday, thirteen of us stood in a Las Vegas courtroom to hear the verdict from Judge Jansen regarding our September trial for trespassing on April 9, 2009 at Creech Air Force Base, headquarters of the U.S. drone operations. Last September, the judge had dramatically announced that he would need at least three months to “think” about the case.

After telling us how “nice” it was to see us, the Judge presented each of us with a twenty page legal ruling explaining why he found us guilty. You argued a defense of necessity, he said, “when an inherent danger is present and immediate action must be taken,” such as breaking a no-trespassing law to uphold a higher law and save life. “In this case, no inherent danger was present, and so I find you guilty.”

Guilty! My friends and I have tried every legal means possible to stop our government from its terrorist drone bombing attacks on civilians in Afghanistan, and so we journeyed to the drone headquarters at Creech AFB  near Las Vegas on Holy Thursday to kneel in prayer and beg for an end to the bombings. This nonviolent intervention is determined to be criminal-not the regular drone bombing attacks on children in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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